


Dithyramb, or a eulogy to the dreams I have abandoned

by Matloc



Series: Royalty!AU [2]
Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Alternate Universe - Greek Mythology, Attendant!Akashi, King!Kuroko, M/M, a failed attempt at surrealism, and failed at the akkr too, based on the story of King Midas, but then i got lost in the akkr, weirdness and vagueness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-03
Updated: 2015-11-03
Packaged: 2018-04-29 18:52:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5138759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Matloc/pseuds/Matloc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For there is no man who has made love once, and only once.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dithyramb, or a eulogy to the dreams I have abandoned

**Author's Note:**

> so i've been enamored with certain stories from greek mythology lately
> 
> Kuroko is (based on) King Midas, that dude who could turn anything he touched into gold

Falling in love is easier than one would think—surviving a love, on the other hand, is a nightmare for those with stars for eyes.

First, Tetsuya greets him from a gilded throne, eyes blank and face curved hard as the gold underneath his palms. Cold, firm and beautiful. But Seijuurou does not call him metal. He is at most a pallid shadow wafting behind the glimmer flooding the castle. A shadow of a king who rules the heart of no man except ones carved from gold.

First, a thought—a perverse whisper—jolts Seijuurou’s spine as he lays eyes on the king surrounded by waves of golden pouring, pouring,  _pouring_  till the end of horizon.

 

> _“Perhaps it is that no man deserves to be ruled by him, because no ordinary man deserves his touch.”_
> 
> _“But do you think you are different?”_

It’s wiped away with nary a second thought, but desire taints faster a veil of purity than it does an already fallen, dirtied soul.

And, just like the gods intended, Seijuurou falls most beautifully.

 

_“What do you wish for, my king?”_

It is a curse envied by many yet coveted by none. Tetsuya is born with it, because he opens his eyes to the world in a cage instead of a cradle. He spends most of his life locked in his bones, doing little to nothing more than lifting a finger off a decorated armrest. Nothing more than necessary—safe.

He cannot feed, so he is fed. He cannot bathe, so he is bathed. Cage or no cage, he sits a prisoner on the grandest of all thrones.

(If passiveness had a tangible form, it would be molded to the skin of his very fingertips, like plastic.)

When the prisoner turns a sky-crowned head towards Seijuurou, his thoughts begin to spill on a wave crashing amongst all the whispers occupying the cracks in a sunlit corridor. For this is the only sound the kingdom makes:

“How pitiful, my king.”

 

_“It is with a king’s humble hope for the prosperity of his land that I ask you this.”_

For all the shimmer and shine his cursed hands paint, Tetsuya himself is a dulled core. His gaze resembles rusted skies, though that is more guesswork when one’s never truly been graced with it for more than fleeting second. It is as though the king averts his vision from all semblance of a life flowing outside his own veins. It is his lungs only that steal air because metal does not breathe. It does not move; it does not see. Everything that does is consumed in beautiful yellowed sheen and so Tetsuya is still the only one who lives and gets to see a sky that doesn’t burn golden. At least that is what he tells himself behind closed eyelids.

Is it guilt or is it shame, Seijuurou is often tempted to ask.

Then he catches a glint of gold crusting the tip of Tetsuya’s fingernails and decides to forget any question he’d already know the answer to. Forget and bury them in sand as coarse as the jewellery he once found in his mother’s boudoir.

 

_“Everything I touch, may it turn to pure, shining gold.”_

Seijuurou begins to dream of clear skies. Lying under the stars, he wonders if Tetsuya is just as pure.

It’s a fleeting thought that doesn’t take direction until Seijuurou holds up a tray of grapes, plucking out a fat one to press against the king’s lips. It’s an accident when their eyes meet, baby blues frozen in place as the king swallows the grape, averting them once realization pricks his skin.

But the tickling brush against soft lips, the fading burn on the tips of Seijuurou’s fingers.

That is neither accident nor mistake.

_The god Dionysus regards the king in askance._

Seijuurou is made a slave to his own desires. He can deny it all he wants but the craftworks are already mapped out in blueprints, dotted by constellations. He becomes a believer and asks Tetsuya which one he was born under.

“Who rules your stars?”

The king looks for the ones reflected in his wine. It cuts through the falling night with the occasional glimmer, as does everything that’s touched by the king. “Dionysus,” he murmurs without any edge. It sounds soft like an oath of forgiveness. The wine he sips, a promise signed in blood.

His attendant keeps his mouth shut lest his words grow so sharp they cut off his tongue.

When the last of the embers die out, the darkness emerges to mask Seijuurou’s questions so that they become invisible to the stars peeking around the edges.

Is it alright to love a shadow?

 

_“Such is the nature of your wish, O king?”_

The king and his attendant sleep tucked under sheets spun from gold, and Seijuurou finds that the cold in this place never truly goes away.

After two months he’s had enough. The surprise in Tetsuya’s eyes is much more welcoming than the cold as he slips in next to the king.

(But he chooses to ignore the look of dread mixed in.)

“I will not touch you,” Seijuurou promises those wide blue eyes. Tetsuya, he is human and he trusts the lie. He trusts Seijuurou and lets himself fall asleep, for the first time in his life clutching to the traces of human warmth next to him.

.

.

.

Seijuurou always pays his dues. He never breaks promises. But Seijuurou never promised self-control.

The wine is as dark as the red in Seijuurou’s eyes as they rest on the brim, watching it disappear between the lips of the man he has sworn to serve.

Tetsuya asks for fruit and the bells of temptation ring somewhere in the distance. It’s in the back of Seijuurou’s mind as he holds an apple slice to Tetsuya’s lips. Each bite drawing closer to cold fingertips until they’re enveloped in warmth quite unfamiliar to Seijuurou.

He holds his breath, looks at Tetsuya’s tongue laving at the pads of his fingers. This time Tetsuya does not break eye contact, passing a silent message with the heat of his breath, the glint in his eye.

Seijuurou has to collect his bearings and has to remember he never promised self-control.

He prods at the seam of Tetsuya’s lips until they close around his index finger, sucking deeply. But Seijuurou’s greedy, tugging at the other’s jaw to make it loosen up, leaving Tetsuya’s mouth wide open. Seijuurou jams three of his fingers deep into Tetsuya’s mouth, leaving the man panting harshly around their length. Right now, he is no king. Right now Seijuurou sees a reflection in pale skin: a man becoming a slave to his own desire.

The attendant closes his eyes at the sensation of Tetsuya’s tongue wrapping around his fingers, he loses himself to imagination.

Whether this is an offering of sin or a service in gratitude, Seijuurou receives it all without complaint. He leans forward, supporting himself on the sofa as he pulls out his fingers and tips the shorter’s chin upwards.

He presses his lips against Tetsuya, stealing all his breaths for his own, and he realizes the both of them have been tainted a long time ago.

They pull apart too quickly for Seijuurou’s liking, but there is one thing that must be said. A confirmation of sorts. “You must yearn for the touch of a human after all the winters you have passed through alone.”

Unlike Seijuurou, Tetsuya will never lie. Not for kindness and certainly not for loyalty. “Yes.”

The answer does not come as a surprise. Seijuurou hides the twinge in his chest by drowning in Tetsuya’s taste.

He blames the bitterness on the wine.

.

.

.

Something sprouts between them, but it does not quite realize Seijuurou’s desires. He prayed for an orchard and got left with a wreath of weeds lining his worth around his wrists.

This is fine for now, he tells himself. Then one lie turns to ten, all the same words repeating in his head. He lets them haunt his dreams as he sleeps next to Tetsuya, closer than an arm’s width, yet how far must he walk even in his own dreams to cross the distance?

But something has sprouted and Seijuurou lets it take root in his hands. They dig grooves into Tetsuya’s cheeks, engrave transient marks, and carve fire underneath skin. Tetsuya’s lips confess he’s not too competent with self-control, so Seijuurou pins his arms down and becomes a perpetual cage himself.

And he fills it with cold reminders packed in his hot breath. “You mustn’t forget, king. You cannot touch me.”

It’s not a rule, it’s a curse. But so is Tetsuya’s smile when he wordlessly accepts it.

With every inch of skin exposed, they’re taking a risk. They know because Tetsuya holds on to his armrests, or his sheets, or his next glimmering creation by lodging his fingers into shimmering metal, like he wants his hands to be swallowed whole. He holds on to them for dear life when Seijuurou is around, and now he is the embodiment of guilt. And he is caged because Seijuurou holds all the guilt of mankind in a chalice of bones left behind by all the dead stars.

It also holds an inevitability, a promise of tipping over since Tetsuya’s emotions alone are enough to make it overflow. It’s hard not to when Seijuurou’s holding him in his lap with all the intent of defiling the king’s throne and not an ounce of shame to go with it. Fingers flutter along his ribcage, climbing up skin that’s revealed as Seijuurou undoes his robe. Tetsuya shudders and squirms under his cold touch but not once does he loosen his grip on the back of the chair. This is their rule, though he has been brought up bound to chains since birth.

“Seijuurou.” His chants steam in his throat and burn through locked lips. It is worship, and so Seijuurou’s hands must mean devotion. They travel down his spine and Tetsuya almost suspects a mantra of possession inscribed into his bones just now. But there is no room to care when Tetsuya’s entirety is consumed breath by breath by a fire from within.

As he burns, he thinks surely he has never seen red before he met Seijuurou. Nor has he ever felt red, until now, where it’s creeping on his cheeks and following the trail Seijuurou’s lips leave as they latch on to his neck. Tetsuya’s body jerks against his will and in a surprising, uncharacteristic moment he loses himself: a hand flying out, crashing straight into the fruit bowl sat next to Seijuurou’s arm.

The illusion shatters with a resounding clang of metal.

At first they break apart into silence, then Tetsuya’s clambering off Seijuurou’s lap to collapse upon the gold-laid floor. He collects the golden figurine of a toppled bowl of fruits with his trembling arms, and his voice breaks just as much when he speaks, “Seijuurou, we cannot do this anymore.”

His attendant regards him in silence. Tetsuya’s blue blood translates that into the language of the aristocrats. A simple word. “No.”

Tetsuya grits his teeth. “I am not asking this of you as your king.”

“Which is why I must decline, Tetsuya.” Seijuurou’s answer tastes like corroded metal. “You fool yourself if you believe I plan to let you go.”

“As do you then, if you think that is what I want.” His mawkish glare does no good when he’s on the floor, facing Seijuurou, who stands firm before him. But he knows his anger is pointed at himself. At the golden fruit bowl weighing heavily in his arms. “I simply want… I want to _touch_  you. And I am too afraid I will someday.”

Seijuurou finally sees it. Tetsuya, whose fingers clench so tight around the bowl like he seeks to crush it. Tetsuya, who’s kneeling on the ground and looks like he’s praying.

He had forgotten. In meeting Tetsuya he had forgotten himself, that gods are often blind to prayer.

“This is the first I have ever made a wish,” Tetsuya continues, looking up with a rueful smile. “What have you made of me, Seijuurou?”

Seijuurou feels the weight of the stars on his back. He didn’t expect this day to come, not in this century. The floor scratches his flesh with granules of gold as he kneels in front of the king, they feel like frozen tears, reciting a prayer by the kingdom.

“Is that what you wish for, my king?” He takes Tetsuya’s hand, cradles it with his fingers and presses a kiss to the back of his palm. He smiles for once, not at Tetsuya’s shock but at the warmth of his hand. “There is a place I would like to take you.”

This is not the first time a god has fallen onto his knees for a human.

 

_“O king, shall I take thee to the river of Pactolus?”_

**Author's Note:**

> this was meant to be a surrealist piece but it came out too literal what is the English language. this fic has like 0 characterization what a disgrace but i wanted it to have a typical greek myth structure. also i really need to learn how to write in middle english because the dialogue is so awkward why am i so bad at making chars talk like they’re from the 1400s
> 
> Akashi is the god Dionysus (kinda) if the last bit was too vague i’m soz. A dithyramb refers to a hymn sung in honor of Dionysus (also Plato).
> 
> it’s been months since I wrote anything but I see the weird atmosphere still persists in my writing, i feel proud
> 
> sorry for the lack of fics (and the awkward almost-porn)


End file.
